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SALE PENDING - Hello Everyone...Just a note for those of you who do not check the For Sale Section often, but I am selling my Trabant for $2500. Link is below, if you're interested, reach out to me.
http://www.trabantforums.com/threads/price-drop-1984-trabant-limo-for-sale-clear-title.43437/

Well I am snooping on the forum right now because I can't sleep, then I remembered a story about the Trabant that I'm currently restoring. Kerry M., the co-owner of the car, was in germany visiting his friend Jurgen Barth. So they drive the Trabbie one day just because they wanted to and everything went fine. A week later, they are at a restaurant getting dinner. The waitress comes up to them, then pauses. She leans in towards Kerry and smells him. She then gleefully exclaims, "You have been driving a Trabant, havent you!?" Kerry replies "That was a week ago! How do you get the f@*king smell to go away!?!?!?"

So anyway, what funny conversations have you guys had because of a Trabant?

My favorite event was I went out to eat for lunch with my wife in the car when I first got it. We were in a small downtown area close to our house, one of those quaint little places.

Anyway, we ordered and I then remembered I forgot to shut the fuel off. So I get up and walked back out to the car and there was a guy standing there looking at it. I just keep going and unlock the door and he asks "Is this your car?" To which I replied "Yes", he sticks his arms out opening them, motioning to the car and just says "Tell me more..."

That's awesome! I always love the look on people's faces when I tell them that my car is from the 80's... Oh! I just remembered my favorite quote! So when I first got the Trabant in my dad's shop, this guy that has a huge microcar collection (well over 100 cars) was down at the shop. He is also eastern european, so the mixture of the 2 meant that he stood by the car for well over an hour telling me facts/stories about the car. Then before he leaves, he points at the car, looks at me, and says in his heavy accent, "Be careful, many girl get impregnate in car" every single time he was down at the shop after that he would always remind me. I laughed soooooo hard when this happened!

. A week later, they are at a restaurant getting dinner. The waitress comes up to them, then pauses. She leans in towards Kerry and smells him. She then gleefully exclaims, "You have been driving a Trabant, havent you!?" Kerry replies "That was a week ago! How do you get the f@*king smell to go away!?!?!?"

So anyway, what funny conversations have you guys had because of a Trabant?

Click to expand...

"What smell?"
Uh oh!

What funny conversations?
Why all of them of course!

Even the one that went:
He: "Why don't you take your communist car back to Russia."
Me: "Я не русская!"

Maybe it's because I've interacted with many hundreds (thousands?) of people alongside Comrade Trabi.
There were bound to be a few negative reactions. Three, exactly.

An eastern bloc or a soviet person would never have mistaken Comrade Trabi for a Russian*, so I'm assuming that particular person is a "Proud Americun".

"Proud Americuns", as they like to call themselves, are Proud, Patriotic and above all, Gawd-Fearing Fine Upstanding Citizens.
"That's just the way it is and if you don't like it, leave!" is their motto. Or was it "Hold My Beer and Watch This"?
Blaming everything on and shooting at communists are their favorite pastimes..

* While no eastern-bloc person could possibly mistake Comrade Trabi for a Russian, they very frequently did mistake my brother for one when he was there. Odd.

I had a women once wait for me outside Tractor Supply until I got out. She knew exactly what kind of car it was and asked if my DDR sticker was original. She hadn't seen one in over 20 years.

She said her husband was in the CIA and they lived in West Berlin back in the 1980s. She worked for an American Bank and during that period Berlin had a lot of terriorism going caused by Kadafi. If you remember he had his henchmen open fire at an airport and bomb a bar frequented by American service men back in the mid 80s. The parking attendant at the garage she parked her car at would stick a rod with a mirror under her car to see if there was a bomb attached to it.

Anyway she took photos of my car so she could show her husband. She was actually quite emotional about it. She was at the Berlin wall when it fell.

She was allowed into East Berlin but her husband was not because he was in the CIA. She said everybody had a paranoid look on their face, looking over their shoulders to see if the Stasi was going to arrest them. She ate at some resturant and because of the exchange rate the meal costed her about $3.00 as apposed to $15.00 in West Germany.

On another occasion I was at my favorite sushi resturant when this new waitress who was very young knew what I was driving. I was like, "Really? You know what kind of car that is? Most people my father's age thinks it's a Crosley". Her mother was German and she said she saw them when her family would go other there.

I have not taken my car to show Rudy at German motors, yet who is from Germany. But I was driving past his garage one day and he was talking to a customer out front so I beeped my horn a few times. He just smiled and waved at me as I went by. He probably knew it was me because I told him years ago one of these days I was going to buy me a Trabant.

As you might imagine, Comrade Trabi and I have very many stories over the last 2-1/2 years, especially the last 14 months and 31,000 kilometers.

Here's a recent one:

Many comrades from out of town were visiting Chicago recently. So, I started giving Trabi Tours to any and all who wanted, three at a time.

One of the trips went like this:

HQ to Haymarket Memorial. While at the memorial, studying the plaques and the Anarchist-Proof construction of the monument, a tour bus pulled up behind Comrade Trabi! "What have we here?" "Communists!"

From Haymarket, we went downtown to Michigan avenue and headed North. I announced this as "Chicago's Magnificient Mile of Exploitation" and observed that the many Capitalist Pigs present were still nervously sniffing the air for Duroplast because of our last visit...

From Michigan Avenue, we merged onto Chicago's famous LSD or "Lake Shore Drive". I may have pointed out that much of the area is built upon "made earth" and might sink into Lake Michigan bringing all the filthy rich down with it if a major earthquake occurs.

After turning around, we did LSD southbound. I pointed out the Drake Hotel where many Inbred, oops! "Royal" persons stay during their visits, financed entirely by crushing their home populations.
I also pointed out Navy Pier, built because the center of a continent is an obvious place for foreign invasion and thus needs a military base.

Going past, Navy Pier, we had a glimpse of the Buckingham Fountain of Ill Intent before going past the Field Museum (Hi, Sue!).
As we passed our football stadium Soldier Field, I may have mentioned the crash-landed giant UFO that protrudes at odd angles around the upper perimeter.

A little ways further, we passed McCormick Place, our convention center which used to be home to most Capitalist Auto Shows until Comrade Trabi came to town and there was no longer any point.

Leaving LSD, we merged onto the Stevenson Expressway and quickly onto the Dan Ryan expressway. As we passed U.S. Cellular Field, aka Sox Field or Comiskey Park, I announced: "Here is where we play baseball in Chicago. There is another place a few miles north of here where people go to drink until they fall over. That one is Wrigley Field, home of the Pathetic North-Side Losers ...oops! Chicago Cubs.